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by Jetson Wood (age 10)

I am going to be talking about Sport Climbing, one of the newest Olympic sports. At the Tokyo Olympics there were four sports making their debut: Skateboarding, surfing, karate and sport climbing. They made their debut at the Olympics because the Olympic committee is trying to appeal to younger audiences.

I am a part of this younger audience and I really liked all these sports especially sport climbing.

Sport climbing in the Olympics includes three disciplines: speed climbing, bouldering and lead climbing.

The first discipline is speed climbing. In speed climbing, two athletes attempt to climb side by side on a 15m high wall, faster than their opponent on identical routes. Winning times for men are between 5-6 seconds, whilst women usually win in 7-8 seconds.

The next discipline they do is bouldering. In bouldering, athletes aim to complete the highest number of challenging routes on a 4.5m wall in a given amount of time.

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The third and final discipline is lead climbing. Lead involves athletes attempting to climb as high as they can within 6 min, on a wall measuring more than 15m in height. Endurance and climbing techniques are the key elements to success and the athlete who reaches the highest point wins.

They say sport climbing was a new sport but was it? From 1896 till 1932 rope climbing was at the Olympics. Participants had to climb up a rope in the quickest time possible.

Now that sport climbing is in the Olympics I hope it stays for good.

It should have always been on the program because it is the perfect Olympic sport. It covers all the parts of the Olympic motto: "Citius, Altius, Fortius", which is Latin for faster, higher, stronger - which is just like sport climbing: faster is for speed climbing, higher is for lead climbing and stronger is for bouldering.

This year they have added ‘together’ to the motto and in sport climbing all these disciplines come together to find the best.

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Related Pages

• All about the sport of climbing
• Climbing at the Olympic Games
• Para-Climbing at the Paralympics
• Olympic Games Motto